It’s 8:00 p.m. Friday Sept. 11. mechanical engineering freshman Simon Sackey is starting to make his way back to Sirius Hall after meeting with the wrestling club at the Activity Center when out of the corner of his eye he suddenly sees a yellowish-brown blur disrupt the dark of the night — he wondered if this could be the Peanut Butter Guy himself, the viral campus cryptid that first began posting about his peanut-laden runs on Sept. 3. 

Sackey said he had been following the Peanut Butter Guy on Instagram for a few weeks now; he had seen the riddles online and called his friends from off-campus to come join him in the chase for what was supposed to be the third run on Sept. 4. And then Peanut Butter Guy cancelled it at the last minute: “Guys UTD hit me with a cease and desist I literally can’t,” Peanut Butter Guy said on Sept. 4. 

Sackey thought all hope of actually catching Peanut Butter Guy was lost, but it seemed the campus had other plans in store for him. 

“I’m looking to the left, and then to the right when I suddenly see this guy hussin up the steps of the Student Union,” Sackey said. “He was getting chased by a couple dozen people. That’s when I yell: IT’S HIM! IT’S HIM!”

And that’s when the Peanut Butter Guy “turned on the jets” according to Sackey. Peanut Butter Guy, a biology freshman at UTD, said very few students had caught him and he liked to keep it that way.

“I can run pretty dang fast,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “I’m a pretty good runner thanks to my like nice legs I guess. I can do some parkour stuff which really helps me get away from people.”

Sackey had already lost one chance at getting the coveted 20 “smackaroos” reward from tagging Peanut Butter Guy; he was determined to make sure that did not happen again. 

“I was hussin and hawkin it down the stairs, past corners, and by the food trucks,” Sackey said. “He kept swerving in a way that kept me far behind, and then he made a big mistake. After jumping over a corner he kept going in a straight line and that’s when I finally got him!”

Peanut Butter Guy said that whenever he does a run, he likes to set some ground rules since this is ultimately for fun: 1) people win if they manage to tag him; 2) no skateboards, scooters or other forms of transportation are allowed — the chase has to be on foot; 3) participants shouldn’t call the cops or administration on him, allegedly he will know if you did; 4) you can’t group up on him during the chase, each racer is on their own; 5) pushing and slapping do not count as a ‘tag.’ And then, of course, people who successfully tag him win prizes ranging from $20 cash to a peanut butter sandwich — and often just nothing. 

So why peanut butter? 

“I thought it’d be like a fun stupid thing to do, and thus worth trying,” Peanut Butter guy said. “And then it actually started working. My hair looked really nice and was growing out more, and my skin looked and felt smooth.”

This joke suddenly became a whimsical part of Peanut Butter Guy’s self-care routine. The first time he did a run with it was when he went out to walk his dog without fully removing the peanut butter first.

“I had just forgotten I had it on until a big glob of peanut butter fell on my shoe,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “At that moment I quickly understood why people kept giving me strange looks and why my dog had been so jumpy that day.”

When Peanut Butter Guy’s friends found out about his dog-walking escapade, they loved the idea of him running around covered in peanut butter. He kept the bit going and got his friends to chase him around their high school twice. 

“Nothing really important was happening in our senior year of high school, so we had to find something fun to do,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “This was that.”

Peanut butter challenges?

Running around campus covered in peanut butter is hard work — especially in the Texas heat. 

Peanut Butter Guy said cost had never really been a factor since peanut butter in bulk was surprisingly inexpensive. He spent roughly $35 at the Northside 7/11 which gave him enough peanut butter to cover 4 or 5 runs. The hundred-degree weather of the past few weeks has unfortunately made Peanut Butter Guy go through more of his supply than usual. 

“The heat is a really big problem because I have to reapply, usually like 2 to 3 times during the run, since it’s just so hot that it starts to melt off a little bit,” Peanut Butter Guy said. 

Peanut Butter Guy said each chase takes a bit of planning on his end. He usually scopes out the campus a few hours before the run, strategically placing water bottles around so he can easily remember hiding spots for that night while staying hydrated. 

“Hydration is a big problem, but doing these 1 to 2 hour runs at night at least makes it cooler,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “It also makes it easier for me to hide and run around when I can blend into the night.”

Peanut Butter Guy said that different kinds of peanut butter also have different uses for these kinds of runs. Smooth peanut butter is more aesthetic and easier to apply, but crunchy peanut butter is more durable and better at concealing the wearer’s identity. 

“For quick walks around the campus, I like using smooth peanut butter because it looks better,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “But for the actual runs, I use crunchy peanut butter since it is all around better at lasting and actually sticking to my face for a longer period of time.”

“I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention to it until my friend pointed Peanut Butter Guy out in the building’s lobby,” Sadineni said. “I thought it was pretty cool and honestly this kind of behavior made sense with what UTD was usually like.”

Sadineni said that on Sept. 14 her building supervisor asked her to check with her residents to see if anyone could help identify the Peanut Butter Guy.

“Housing was concerned that this guy was just roaming around Andromeda without living here which was a safety concern,” Sadineni said. “When I was a PA for [University Village] phases 1 through 3, there was a situation where an older guy was just walking between buildings late at night, it turned out to be maintenance without their uniform. But that is the stuff we generally look for since we want to make sure residents are safe.”

Peanut Butter guy said that he understood why University Housing would want to investigate possible safety concerns for their residents and that he “entirely respected that.”

“I understand why they would be confused,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “But I am not hurting anyone, not breaking any rules and I am making it so that me and the 30 or so people that chase me have a lot of fun.”

What does it mean to peanut butter run?

While Peanut Butter Guy insists his runs are just for fun and not political, the phenomenon has caught the attention of campus academics who see something deeper in the absurdity. 

Jonathan Pinckney, associate professor of political science at UTD, compared the Peanut Butter Guy’s chases to a form of “dilemma action” — a protest tactic where authorities are put in a double bind. Pinckney pointed to a real-world example: Sahrawi activists who attached Western Sahara independence flags to stray cats and released them at a protest.

“If they don’t do anything, if they just allow the cats to run around, then it’s like the activists won,” Pinckney said. “And so I think there is a dilemma action aspect to this here where if the authorities do nothing, they look kind of silly, but if they do something about it, they also look kind of silly.”

Applied to Peanut Butter Guy, Pinckney said the same logic holds: “Presumably nobody in the university administration wants to catch them because they’re covered in peanut butter and so I would imagine it quite unpleasant to actually catch them. But if you don’t catch them, then they continue to run around.”

Pinckney noted that making authorities look silly “undermines the fear that people have of them and can facilitate mobilization.” Peanut Butter Guy jokes about getting legal threats from the university while engaging in behavior which, while contributing to his cult community of chasers, could face legal and disciplinary action if UTD felt that his chases counted as disorderly conduct. 

Andy Amato, professor of instruction in philosophy at UTD, placed Peanut Butter Guy within a long tradition of absurdist performance art groups. 

“It’s really sort of absurd and performative to run around covered in peanut butter,” Amato said. “It’s part of this broader impulse to play. Whether or not Peanut Butter Guy is aware of it, these acts certainly fall into the traditions of Situationists and other absurdists.” 

Amato said that this kind of performance often came from a need for a fun community, something that large institutions like UTD can’t always guarantee for their students. Amato said that even without an explicit political message, these runs filled a valuable role on campus. 

“We need some positive things and we need some things that allow us to enjoy each other’s company,” Amato said. “There’s so much that’s really terrible and dividing us, but I think it’s also incumbent upon us to find ways to find joy while we’re going about our lives. If that means we occasionally have people run around covered in peanut butter, then I say great. This might just be a way for students to find levity in a world that’s really weighed down by an excessive gravity.” 

Peanut Butter Guy himself offered a similar, if less academic, philosophy. 

“Life is too short to be sugarcoating stuff and beating around the bush,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “You gotta get out there and do something crazy while you’re young and you still have the chance to go around and do dumb crazy stuff.” 

He also encouraged others to embrace whimsy that fuels him for a few hours each night he runs.

“Do something wacky and wild, you know, have a little joy and whimsy in your life,” Peanut Butter guy said. “That’s the main thing for me.”

For now, Peanut Butter Guy said he plans to keep running — with or without the university’s blessing.

“I am planning on doing more, even if some officials from UTD tell me to stop,” Peanut Butter Guy said. “I’m going to try to fight my case for this so I can keep doing it because I’m not really doing anything wrong. I’m just running around campus with peanut butter on my face and it’s kind of just a stupid little fun community thing.”